Wright Mills’ The Promise, showing the relationship between history and biography in terms of it being based on a true story with the characters being real people. The reactions of the characters in the movie would be considered realistic during that time. It was in a time period where there was still a lot of racism that was accepted throughout the United States of America. Parts of society did not want to accept the fact that schools were being integrated and that Blacks were as equal as Whites; their minds were still in the past. “The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values...often sense that older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed..newer beginnings are ambiguous to the point of moral stasis.” (C. Wright Mils’. 2) So many people were scared of change and not being in a comfortable spot. Generation by generation was instructed to harbor this hate which laws were made to help stop but it never did. Therefore the past was affecting the present and the children of upcoming generations were given this same mindset from their parents, allowing for their parents hatred to continue living on in them. An example from the movie is when the team is taken to a football camp for pre conditioning and all of the players are together. Some of the players end up fighting each other and Coach Boone decides that each player must get to know a player of the opposite race every day until …show more content…
The only person he wanted to see was Julius. Gary’s mother held Julius’s hands and told him to be strong before he went in. Gary’s mother did not like Julius at first to obvious reasons but knew how much he meant to Gary. As Julius walks in to see Gary, the nurse says, “Only kin allowed in here.” To which Gary responds, “Alice. Are you blind? Don’t you see the family resemblance? That’s my brother.” The hatred that Gary started out with was gone during the conditioning in the early part of the film, when he was forced to know another person different by color. All it took was one argument with Julius and he changed. “It enables him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their daily experience, often become falsely conscious of their social positions.” (Mils’ 3) When the football team goes to state the stadium is not segregated anymore. As Gary’s mother walks in everyone stands and claps both white and black. Those players did not change society as a whole that year, but they changed that towns’ way of thinking leading to better days to